A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch)
by Michael Connelly
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael ConnellyEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-03-01
ISBN: 0446667900
Number of pages: 488
Publisher: Vision
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780446667906
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch)
Book Review: My favorite Connelly thus far...
Summary: 5 Stars
In a Darkness More Than Night, Michael Connelly inserts a character from Blood Work into his Harry Bosch mystery series to create a powerful thriller. In fact, this book has become my favorite Connelly book out of the nine that I have read thus far.
Terry McCaleb is a retired FBI agent whose specialty was behavioral sciences (profiling). LAPD homicide detective Jaye Winston seeks out McCaleb's help on a murder case that is going nowhere. The victim, Edward Gunn, was accused of killing a prostitute six years previous, but the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. Gunn's murder scene includes ritualistic symbolism with religious ties. McCaleb misses the excitement and challenge of his bureau days and quickly agrees to help. But what he discovers is very disturbing. At the same time, LAPD detective Harry Bosch is preparing for the trial of the famed Hollywood director, David Storey (who is accused of killing a young starlet and making it look like an accidental autoerotic death).
When the FBI takes the Gunn case away from Winston, McCaleb is left hanging with important evidence. It is possible that Harry Bosch may or may not have killed Gunn (he was the lead investigator when Gunn killed the prostitute). Reluctantly, McCaleb and Bosch join forces to discover what they're missing in the murder investigation of Edward Gunn. At the same time, clues in the Gunn case start pointing to the David Storey trial. A Darkness More Than night was so exciting that it kept me up late into the night.
I have enjoyed all Connelly's mysteries, but Darkness has become my favorite. The story is suspenseful and moving. It is definitely darker than previous Bosch books (which all have an element of darkness to them). What is especially fascinating is McCaleb's profiling of Bosch. There is also much about the Renaissance painter, Hieronymus Bosch and Harry's namesake. Connelly calls the painter "a tortured soul, tormented genius" and the same can be said of Bosch the detective. McCaleb describes law enforcement- types as being men on a mission or avenging angels, and has determined that Bosch is the later. "There was a sacred bond cast between victim and cop that formed at the crime scene and could not be severed. It was what ultimately pushed them into the chase....It had been his experience that those cop/angels were the best investigators he ever worked with. He also came to believe that they traveled closest to that unseen edge beneath which lies the abyss." McCaleb must determine whether Harry has gone over the edge, or not.
As I've mentioned before, the only bad thing about my reading Connelly books is that I haven't read them in order. Even non-Bosch books should be read in order, as it would have helped me understand more about McCaleb if I read Blood Work first. There are also some minor characters that came from other books, including The Poet. So I will definitely go back and start reading Connelly's other books--not just the Bosch series.
Summary of A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch)
Terry McCaleb, the retired FBI agent who starred in the bestseller "Blood Work," is asked by the LAPD to help them investigate aseries of murders that have them baffled. They are the kind of ritualized killings McCaleb specialized in solving with the FBI, and he is reluctantly drawn from his peaceful new life back into the horror and excitement of tracking down a terrifying homicidal maniac. More horrifying still, the suspect who seems to fit the profile that McCaleb develops is someone he has known and worked with in the past: LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch.When a sheriff's detective shows up on former FBI man Terry McCaleb's Catalina Island doorstep and requests his help in analyzing photographs of a crime scene, McCaleb at first demurs. He's newly married (to Graciela, who herself dragged him from retirement into a case in Blood Work), has a new baby daughter, and is finally strong again after a heart transplant. But once a bloodhound, always a bloodhound. One look at the video of Edward Gunn's trussed and strangled body puts McCaleb back on the investigative trail, hooked by two details: the small statue of an owl that watches over the murder scene and the Latin words "Cave Cave Dus Videt," meaning "Beware, beware, God sees," on the tape binding the victim's mouth.
Gunn was a small-time criminal who had been questioned repeatedly by LAPD Detective Harry Bosch in the unsolved murder of a prostitute, most recently on the night he was killed. McCaleb knows the tense, cranky Bosch (Michael Connelly's series star--see The Black Echo, The Black Ice, et al.) and decides to start by talking to him. But Bosch has time only for a brief chat. He's a prosecution witness in the high-profile trial of David Storey, a film director accused of killing a young actress during rough sex. By chance, however, McCaleb discovers an abstruse but concrete link between the scene of Gunn's murder and Harry Bosch's name:
"This last guy's work is supposedly replete with owls all over the place. I can't pronounce his first name. It's spelled H-I-E-R-O-N-Y-M-U-S. He was Netherlandish, part of the northern renaissance. I guess owls were big up there."Bosch fits McCaleb's profile of the killer, and McCaleb is both thunderstruck and afraid--thunderstruck that a cop he respects might have committed a horrendous murder and afraid that Bosch may just be good enough to get away with it. And when Bosch finds out (via a mysterious leak to tabloid reporter Jack McEvoy, late of Connelly's The Poet) that he's being investigated for murder, he's furious, knowing that Storey's defense attorney may use the information to help get his extravagantly guilty client off scot-free.McCaleb looked at the paper in front of him. The name she had just spelled seemed familiar to him.
"You forgot his last name. What's his last name?"
"Oh, sorry. It's Bosch. Like the spark plugs."
It's the kind of plot that used to make great Westerns: two old gunslingers circling each other warily, each of them wondering if the other's gone bad. But there's more than one black hat in them thar hills, and Connelly masterfully joins the plot lines in a climax and denouement that will leave readers gasping but satisfied. --Barrie Trinkle
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